Riders From Long Pines (18 page)

“Fair enough,” Sam replied calmly. “If you'll be so kind as to explain everything to Maria here?” He stepped past her and started through the house.

“But, Ranger, please!” Beth Ann called out. “Don't hurt him! He's innocent!”

“You don't have to worry about me hurting him, ma'am,” said Sam, even before he'd crossed the room and started into the rear of the large house, “he's already gone.”

Maria stepped forward and took Beth Ann gently yet firmly by her arm and held her back from following the ranger. “Come. You can tell me everything,” she said, coaxing the young woman.

“Where is he going? Is he going after Holly?” she asked, nodding after the ranger, hearing the rear open and close behind him.

“Is that the drover's name, Holly?” Maria asked, leading her to a pair of chairs in the parlor.

“Yes, his name is Holly . . . Holly Thorpe,” said Beth Ann. She cast a worried look toward the rear of the house.

“
Sí
, he will be going after him,” said Maria, sitting the young woman down. “Now, you must tell me everything so I can tell him when I catch up to him on the trail. . . .”

Outside, at the rear of the house, the ranger caught sight of the drover atop his salt-and-pepper barb racing away from Creasy, disappearing into the pines lining the high trail out of town, the same trail Mackenzie had ridden with Parks in tow two nights earlier.

Hurrying around the house to the hitch rail out front, Sam jumped into his saddle and raced away in pursuit, the big cur who had been sitting on the porch running behind him.

Once upon the trail leading up away from Creasy, the ranger put his horse into a fast but measured pace, slowing with caution at every turn, lest he find himself riding into sudden gunfire. “I'm counting on you wearing that horse out real quick, cowboy,” he murmured toward the dust-looming trail ahead.

But after making a turn more than three miles up from town, Sam felt his horse's rear hoof slip. He felt the animal veer, tense up and immediately reduce its pace to a limping sidestepping walk. “Easy, Black Eye, easy,” he said, slipping down from his saddle while the horse was still moving, and settling the animal quickly.

Rubbing the injured barb's side with his gloved hand, Sam walked back and raised its rear left hoof. The animal flinched, but it allowed him to work the hoof back and forth gently, enough to recognize the tightness and swelling that had already started forming along its tendons.

“All right, boy, I see what you mean,” he said, answering a low pained whinny from the animal as it turned its head, facing him. “This chase is over for you.” He laid the hoof back to the ground softly, seeing the animal cock it slightly off the ground.

Standing, Sam let out a breath and gazed along the trail ahead. But no sooner had he done so than his hand streaked to his Colt, drew it and cocked it. A lone rider sat slumped on his horse in the middle of the trail. “Raise your hands high where I can see them,” the ranger called out, facing the rider from fifty yards away.

But the man didn't raise his hands. Instead he wobbled back and forth in his saddle, then flopped off it into the dirt.

Sam dropped the reins to his injured horse and hurried forward, his Colt raised and ready.

He stopped a few feet away and looked down at the man lying sprawled, facedown, his arms spread in the dirt. As Sam stepped even closer he saw a bullet hole in the center of a wide dark bloodstain on the back of the man's riding duster. The man raised his pale, drawn face toward Sam and said in a weak and shaky voice, “Help me. . . .”

Holstering his Colt, Swam hurried forward, stooped down and rolled the man over onto his back. The man struggled with his words but managed to say, “A—a sheriff . . . shot me.”

“You hang on, mister,” Sam said, “I'm going to get you to town.” He made a quick glance along the trail in the direction the young man had fled. Then he put any thoughts of following the drover right then from his mind and looked down at the face of the wounded man.

As he spread open the bloody duster and shirt, the wounded man looked up at him through weak and hollow eyes and repeated in a rasping voice, “A lawman . . . did this. I saw . . . his badge.”

“You keep still and save your strength, mister,” said the ranger. “It was no lawman who shot you.” He looked all around the trail, thinking of Stanton “Buckshot” Parks and the body of former deputy Fred Mandrin.

“He—he was . . . wearing a badge.”

“I understand,” said Sam, “but it was no lawman, take my word for it.” He gazed again along the trail. “Not everybody wearing a badge is a lawman these days.”

Davin Grissin and his new personal bodyguard, Tillman Duvall, stepped down from Grissin's private railcar and walked back to the stock car. Both men wore dapper black suits and matching riding dusters, but they differed in headwear. Grissin wore a silk-trimmed silver derby; Duvall wore a black broad-brimmed frontiersman hat, the front brim folded up, fastened to the crown with a silver scorpion stickpin.

Beneath Duvall's broad-brimmed hat, his face looked like that of a serpent's chiseled from rough faulty stone. A thick, drooping mustache hung below his chin on either side of his thin, tight lips. “There's three turds bobbing in the same chamber pot,” he grumbled under his breath, staring ahead along the rail platform at Money Up Siding.

“What's that?” Davin Grissin asked, staring straight ahead.

“Nothing,” said Duvall. He spit sidelong and gazed ahead with a furrowed brow.

At a stock car, Antan Fellows and Grady Black busily unloaded supplies and horses down a wooden cargo ramp. Peyton Quinn stood back observing, a thumb hooked into his gun belt, holding back the lapel of his corduroy coat. His face was covered with healing bruises and a vicious welt from a marble ashtray. His right eye was still puffy and purple-ringed. Upon seeing Grissin and Duvall, Quinn called out to Grady and Fellows through battered lips, “All right, men,
vamos
! We haven't got all day here.”

Hearing Quinn, and having gotten the gist of Duvall's comment about chamber pots, Grissin said in Quinn's defense, “Peyton Quinn never let me down before.”

Duvall gave a glance at Grissin's cut and battered knuckles, associating them with Quinn's face. “I say where there's a
before
, there should never be an
after
,” said Duvall. He spit again. “But that's just my thinking on the matter.”

“I'll take note of your having said it,” Grissin replied. “I hope you and I have a good solid understanding of what I want done up here.”

“I believe we do,” said Duvall. “You've got a ranger you want dry-sodded for hurting your boys' feelings, and four cattle punchers you want skinned and et alive for stealing your money. I'd have to be a fool not to understand it the first time, wouldn't I?” His words came as something between a threat and a question.

“I'd never consider you a fool, Tillman Duvall,” said Grissin, “but because I've dealt with my share of
idiots
these days, let's talk straight. To hell with
my
boys' feelings. For reasons I won't go into I don't want the ranger in our way.”

“You want him killed?” Duvall asked.

“If it takes killing him to keep him from meddling, yes, that's all right by me. The most important thing is getting my money back.”

As Grissin spoke, they stopped near Peyton Quinn at the cargo ramp. A tall man wearing batwing chaps, with a saddle over his shoulder and a rifle in his hand, came walking toward them from the other direction. “That's Chester Cannidy, foreman at my newly acquired Long Pines spread.”

“More cowpunchers, how nice,” Duvall commented skeptically. “I'm wondering if I charged you enough for this work.”

Grissin gave him a sudden heated stare. “You charged as much as the market would bear, Duvall.”

“If we was standing on Texas dirt, I'd oblige you to call me
Mr.
Duvall,” the serpent-faced gunman said with a trace of a strange, cruel grin, letting Grissin know that heated stares didn't unsettle him in the least.

“We're not
in
Texas,” said Grissin. “A day's ride and we're not even in 'Zona.” His eyes narrowed, and his dark grin matched Duvall's. “See? I know where I'm at,
Duvall
,” he added, leaning a little menacingly toward him.

“Meaning?” Duvall asked in a prickly tone.

“Meaning I've seen thieves and gunmen go sour on one another when one of them becomes rich . . . the way I have,” said Grissin. “They think that man turned soft for some reason.” He tapped his black-gloved fingers on his gun butt. “But before you start returning me short answers and side pokes to test my bark, you'll do well to remind yourself how many men I've killed, none of them for pay, the way you have, but every damn one of them because they thought they could crowd me over matters of money.”

Without taking his eyes from Grissin's, Duvall crooked his mouth sidelong and spit, then said, “I'm reminded, and you'll do well to note that I'll need no
further reminding
on the subject.”

Grissin nodded slowly in agreement and turned away when Chester Cannidy stopped and dropped his saddle onto the plank platform. “Hey, cowboy,” Quinn said to him straightaway, “give them a hand with these horses and supplies.”

Cannidy gave him a narrowed stare.

“You heard me,
vamos
!” said Quinn in a belligerent manner, his battered face partially hidden by the shadow of his hat brim.

Vamos, your ass. . . .
Ignoring him, Cannidy turned to Grissin. “Mr. Grissin, I picked up a little more news about the four drovers on my way here through Creasy.”

“Good work, Cannidy, what is it?” said Grissin, giving a thin smile of satisfaction for Duvall's sake. Duvall looked away, this time toward Quinn, and spit again.

“A bartender told me two men rode into town, dressed like drovers. One of them wore spectacles and rode like he was wounded. That would be Holly Thorpe. He got himself treated by the doctor there. The ranger found him, but Thorpe got away when the ranger's horse picked up a bad bruise and a pulled tendon.”

“Any word about my money?” Grissin looked at him expectantly.

“No, sir, nothing,” said Cannidy. “But can I tell you what I think?”

Grissin just looked at him.

Cannidy ventured on. “I think these drovers got a hold of it by mistake and don't know how to turn it loose.”

“You're telling me they're not thieves?” Grissin shrugged. “What do I care? Thieves, thugs or Methodists, it doesn't matter, they've still got my money.”

“Alls I'm saying is maybe if we could let them know that all they've got to do is give it back to us,” said Cannidy. He gestured a nod north toward a line of high rugged hilltops, beyond them a line of even higher, even more rugged mountains. “It would beat tracking them in this hard country.”

“You're my tracker, Cannidy,” Grissin said harshly. “Is this going to be too hard for you?”

“No, sir, I can track them past hell and back to Kansas,” said Cannidy. “I'm just offering something for consideration, is all.”

“Hmmph.” Duvall looked away and spit again in disgust.

“I see.” Grissin looked at him for a moment, then nodded his head. “What about this? I could get word to them, offer them a reward of some sort?”

“I hadn't gone that far, but I expect it couldn't hurt,” said Cannidy.

“How much . . . ?” Grissin looked back and forth, studying the idea. “Say, five hundred, a thousand dollars maybe?”

“Well, I—” Cannidy stammered.

Grissin cut him off with a jerk of his head. “Get the hell over there and help with the horses! Track these drovers for me!” he bellowed. “Leave all the thinking to me!”

Cannidy jerked his saddle back up over his shoulder and stepped away.

Duvall looked off, muffling a laugh. A moment later, spotting a rider on a big black-and-white-speckled barb with a black mane and stocking, he asked Grissin, “Have you got any more
experts
coming to join us?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Grissin, looking out across a flat stretch of land at the rider in the long tan riding duster and black suit. “This man used to be chief detective for Midwest Detective Agency.”

“Used to be, huh?” said Duvall, with a sarcastic turn to his voice. He spit sidelong again, this time blowing out his jawful of tobacco and reaching for a fresh plug from the twist of Red Circle inside his duster pocket.

Grissin looked at him. “Yeah, he
used to be.
Now he's not. The ranger shot him. He lost his job over it. Now he wants a piece of the ranger's hide. See why I hired him?” he added stiffly.

“Hell, that's Clayton Longworth,” said Duvall, his attitude perking up a little. “Now you're talking. I was starting to wonder if you even
knew
any gunmen.” He bit a fresh plug off the twist of Red Circle tobacco and stuck the remaining twist back into his pocket.

Grissin gave him a smoldering look, but decided not to respond. Instead, he said, “Being chief of detectives was no small job. I'm going to need a man with that kind of knowledge around me from now on.” He looked at Duvall pointedly and said, “A man with knowledge might be as important as having a bodyguard.”

“Not if there's somebody bent on killing you,” Duvall replied without facing him. He turned sidelong and spit again.

At the wooden cargo ramp, Quinn looked at Cannidy and said dryly, “Welcome to the hunt, cowboy. Throw your saddle over something, go hitch it and get yourself back over here. We've got lots of work left to do.”